Lammas
by Elske
Summary: Based on the stories in the book "Lammas Night"...Ciel and I wrote ours at the same time, but they turned out a little differently, hehe. Mine's very...Elske. :)


"Lammas Night"  
  
She shivered a bit, reaching for her woven shawl. It was a rather old-fashioned thing, but one of the women of the village had knitted it for her, and it did quite well to keep the cold out. It was drafty in this old house, but...it was a roof over her head, and far less drafty than the open road would have been. It was unseasonably cold for late summer...it had been unseasonably cold for high summer when she first arrived in the village.  
The woman - despite whatever else she formerly might have been- came to the village as a wandering sorceress, clad in a simple brown dress and the red trailing, fluttering scarf worn by women with magic. She intended only to stay the night, a few days maybe if the village was in need of her services.   
She did not expect the welcome she received when she arrived there, the crowds of people that gathered at the sight of the ends of her red scarf blowing in the almost autumnal breeze. The wandering woman was quickly escorted into the office of Lord Elliot, the member of the landed aristocracy in charge of the tiny village.  
"Thank the Saints you've arrived!" He said in his dramatic, breathless voice. "We've been waiting and waiting for the arrival of someone like you."  
"Oh?" The woman said, raising one dark eyebrow skeptically. "Someone like me?"  
"Yes. We...we are in need of someone with your powers, my lady." The Lord said, clasping his hands imploringly, and staring up into the sorceress's dark eyes.   
"Of course...it is my duty to help people in need. What do you need done...?" She asked, a bit confused. She could not sense anything terribly wrong when she first came to the village, nothing as bad as to have merited everyone's reactions, anyway.  
The young man blushed. "I'm afraid...I'm afraid you've misunderstood." He stood up, walked around his desk, knelt at the sorceress's feet. "My lady...what I'm asking...I'm asking for you to stay on here. To live in our village."  
The sorceress's eyes widened. "If you're going to ask me something like that, you can not possibly go on calling me 'my lady'...my name is Eve."  
"Eve." He breathed. "Eve...can I possibly...possibly ask you to stay?" He looked directly at her, misty blue-grey eyes meeting her dark ones. "I beg you, not just for me, but for my people."  
She smiled. "I am supposed to be a wandering sorceress...that's what I do, but..." she trailed off. Truthfully, the thought of another winter like the last one she spent on the road was not appealing. And...would it be so bad to stay there? Not for forever, certainly not for forever. "I suppose I..." she looked at the intense young man kneeling at her feet and suppressed a giggle. "Please, Lord Elliot...stand up." Eve said.  
The young lord did so at her command, and looked at her, intently waiting for what she was going to say next.  
"I will...I will stay here." Eve said. "I will stay here, but not permanently...until I can either find or train a replacement, someone who will stay here for always."  
"Wonderful!" The man breathed, his eyes flashing. "We have always been good to our workers of magic in Craydon."  
"Oh?" Eve said, raising one eyebrow skeptically as she lifted her traveling sack back on her shoulder, picked up her walking stick from the floor. "If this is true, then...why are you without one now?"  
"Oh!" Lord Elliot went quite pale, raised both of his long-fingered hands to his face, closed his eyes for a moment. "He...he died." He said finally, in a soft voice that still carried undercurrents of pain.  
"I see." Eve said softly. She knew there was more of a story there, but did not want to ask it now. She did not have the energy left to deal with this man's grief, did not have the ability to worry after the fate of her unknown predecessor.   
Lord Elliot, shadowed, unfalteringly led Eve through the paths of the village to a tiny old house, built from grey stones. "You may live here...it is the house for the village wizard...or sorceress." He added, glancing at Eve. "Things are...mostly as Simeon left them." He said softly. "His books, his papers, everything...you're welcome to them, if you want them."  
Eve smiled. "Thank you, Elliot." Such things were valuable, and the village lord could very easily have sold them instead of keeping them for the wizard's - Simeon's - replacement.  
"All of the furniture is still there too...but I'm afraid you'll be needing new sheets. We...burned those..." he said, blushing. "I'll send one of the village women around with some fresh ones.  
"That is wonderful. Thank you, Elliot." She smiled at the village lord and then opened the door to the house of the wizards.   
She looked around. It was humble, but that was good...she would never be comfortable living in a palace, not anymore.... Eve opened her packs and began spreading her few possessions around, taking pleasure in seeing her familiar things all around. This place was hers, entirely hers, albeit temporarily...but that didn't matter.  
Eve had never had a house of her own before.  
Much to her surprise, she settled into village life well, despite never having experienced village life before. Life was...normal, as usual, or so she supposed, despite the lingering cold. No one talked much about her predecessor, barely acknowledged the fact that she even had one, except to express their gratitude that she had come to replace him.   
This didn't bother her much. She never liked to think of ghosts, the less she thought of the man who once inhabited her house the better. Eve preferred to think of the future as she went about her daily tasks, seeing to the little needs of the villagers and looking for someone who possibly could be trained to be her replacement.  
And the summer slowly began to drift to autumn.  
Eve, yawning, turned back her blankets - which were part of the possessions that she always carried with her, she wouldn't have slept on Simeon's old linens even if she had been able to - and gratefully climbed into bed.   
She awoke slowly, sleepily, drowsily, with a small smile on her face as she reached for him, to draw him closer, into her arms...then woke up with a start as she found only air and bedclothes. Had it all been a dream then? But...it couldn't have been. It just...couldn't have been.   
The sorceress stood up, throwing the blankets off of her. She took a step, and reached for her dressing gown, wrapping it around her and pulling the belt tight, wrapping twice around her waist and tying it with a sharp knot.  
It was not just a dream. Someone had been there...she could remember his breathing, his...she could remember him.  
Eve tried to pretend that none of it happened, that none of it was real, that none of it mattered as she heated the water for tea, went about her day. It was a busy day...she had to do midwife-duty, a job she wasn't used to having, and ended up coming home exhausted, too exhausted to be apprehensive about falling asleep.   
Again she had the dream, again awaking in the morning reaching for a man who wasn't there.  
This time she knew perfectly well that it wasn't merely a dream, that there was something far, far deeper going on.  
Instead of her dressing gown, she dressed before breakfast, lacing up the ties on her cream-colored bodice over one of her simple brown dresses, winding her long red scarf three times around her neck and letting the ends of it fly free. She walked over to the breakfast table, and stopped cold at the sight of a single small bright yellow flower sitting, un-wilted, bright gold against the dark wood of the table.  
Without thinking, she picked it up, cupped it in her hands, and sniffed it. It was a single primrose, a common-enough-flower, but her favorite. No one had ever given her the gift of primrose before...preferring to import orchids or gardenias or roses, fancy flowers, not the kind that could be found growing wild in the forests.  
It was very sweet of someone, some unknown admirer...  
A sudden realization made her drop the bloom as if she had been burned. Primrose was a spring flower, and here it was, autumn.   
She knew now whose work this had to be... leaving without any breakfast, without even stopping for a warm cloak or jacket, she left her little house and began retracing the steps that Lord Elliot used to show her to her new home, right up to the front door of Lord Elliot's house.  
He opened the door with a dramatic sweeping gesture, and his eyes widened when he saw the sorceress standing on his stoop. "Eve!" He said. "What a pleasant surprise." He bent in a slight bow. "Please...come in."  
"There is no need to bow to me." Eve said rather sharply, walking past Lord Elliot, and sitting in the velvet-covered chair in his sitting room.  
"To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?" Elliot said, primly sitting on the edge of the other chair, feet crossed at the ankles.  
"Tell me about Simeon." She said suddenly, afraid that if she did not just come right out and say it, she would never have the courage to.  
Lord Elliot paled. "What?" He said in a soft whispery voice.  
"Tell me about Simeon...what was he like, who was he, how..." she took a quick breath, willing her voice to remain steady, "how did he die?"  
"Simeon..." Elliot said, running his hands through his pale brown hair, then dropping them to his sides. "Simeon was...he was a wonderful man. He was kind and sweet and clever, and...and if you want the unblemished truth, mine are not the eyes you want to be seeing him through." He admitted, pale as death, staring through the sorceress.  
"You adored him." She stated as if it were fact. And it was, that much was quite plain to her from the moment that Elliot first spoke of him.  
"Yes...I'm afraid, I cannot..." he stood up suddenly. "Forgive me, Eve."  
"Wait!" Her voice stopped him, commanding, regal. It was a voice she had been trained very well to use, a voice that would call both peasantry and aristocracy to order, a voice that she had not used in years, since she was sixteen years old.  
Lord Elliot obediently stopped in his tracks. "What is it?" He asked, his breathless voice now trembling. "What more do you want to know?"  
"How did he die?" She asked bravely.  
"How did he die?" Elliot echoed. "I only wish I knew. He died in his sleep, one morning I went to his home and found him there, dead as if merely asleep, and it was as if it was my heart that stopped beating." His voice was ragged, raw, rough around the edges, filled with pain.  
Eve wanted to reach out to him, use her empathy, take his pain...but she could not give in to that temptation. She was not a good empath, taking his pain would make him less, it would change him, he would no longer be himself, and she herself would probably be ruined by his grief; she would crumple and die under the weight of it. Her natural empathy was what drew her to sorcery in the first place, only to find she couldn't bear the weight of serious empathy magic.  
She wanted to reach out to him but could not, and merely sat there, an odd look on her face.  
"I loved him, but we were not lovers, Eve." He continued in that heartbreaking heartbroken voice. "I loved him as I could not love myself..." His voice broke in a sob; he brought both hands up to hide his face, to staunch the flow of tears.  
Eve wanted to help him, but she could not, and so she had to turn away. This time it was he who stopped her dead in her tracks. "You will...keep my secret, Eve?"  
"Of course." She said, a coldness in her voice that she did not properly feel.  
"I shall keep yours." He added.  
"Mine? Whatever makes you think that I have a secret?" Eve said, this time almost-snobbish.  
Elliot smiled at her through his tears. "I once lived at the royal court, Your...Eve." He quickly corrected his first impulse.  
The sorceress's eyes widened. "Good." She said, and turned, and stormed out of Lord Elliot's house, into the chill of afternoon.   
The air now held the blinding bitter tang of winter instead of merely the crispness of autumn. The seasons were turning, and winter was on her way in. The sorceress shivered - whatever possessed her to leave without a coat in this weather? She picked up her skirt and ran up the path towards her little cottage.  
She opened the door and stepped through it, grateful that she had left her fire burning when she left. The house was made of stone - it was unlikely that anything much would get damaged even if the fire got out of hand.   
Eve knelt in front of the hearth, stretching out her chilled hands nearer to the flames. "Hello Simeon." She called, only half in jest, to the seemingly empty house.  
To her surprise, he responded, wrapping invisible strong arms around the sorceress.   
She shivered. "Why are you haunting me, Simeon, hmm? Why not your Lord Elliot?"  
His arms tightened around her, and she felt a voice whispering in her ear. She felt, not heard his response. Because Elliot could not help him, but Eve could. Because he could not toy with that poor man anymore. Because he loved Eve...  
Eve smiled sadly at that, rolling her eyes. "Flattery will get you nowhere, Simeon."  
He pulled her closer...if one could get closer to someone who was not there.... If Eve did not want to be flattered, Simeon would not flatter Eve. But Simeon did love Eve. He wished he knew her when he was alive.  
"What about Elliot?"  
Elliot was nice but he was no Eve. Simeon was not flattering Eve just to get what he wanted.  
"And what do you want?" Eve asked.  
Simeon would not tell her. Simeon was too embarrassed to tell her. Simeon was not flattering Eve, Simeon loved Eve. And he would love her even if she did not do the favor for him. He would always love her.  
"What is this favor?"  
Simon left a book of spells. The favor was in the book.  
Eve turned away from Simeon, felt suddenly vulnerable and alone without his strong invisible arms around her. She walked without thinking, reached for the book on the shelf, opened it to a page that had a spell for setting spirits to rest.  
"Oh." She said softly, quickly scanning the spell. It was a kind of magic she could do...but at such a cost. It was a kind of empathy, she realized, soul-to-soul empathy that would send the spirit to its rest.  
"Is this the favor?" She asked.   
Slowly, inexplicably, the page turned. Eve's eyes quickly flashed over it. It was the exact same thing...or was it...? No...a single word different, but otherwise the same spell. Only instead of sending spirits to their rest, this one would give them new life.  
"Oh. So this is the favor." She said to Simeon.  
Yes. Simeon would love Eve even if she didn't do him the favor.  
"Hmm...it's not an easy task...not an easy decision to make, Simeon." She said. "I'm not sure if I can even do these spells."  
Simeon knew that Eve could. Simeon had faith in Eve. Simeon knew that Eve had empathy...it was Eve's empathy that awakened Simeon from his slumber.   
"Yes, but...I need to think..."  
Simeon wished that Eve would think quickly. Tonight was Lammas night, and the only night that she could perform the spell. Simeon would not mind spending another year with Eve as spirit, especially if she were going to banish him. But he'd much rather be alive again.  
"Tonight?" Eve echoed.  
Yes.  
Eve shivered. "Tonight then. Tonight or never." She closed her eyes.   
Simeon will leave Eve alone with her thoughts.  
Eve sat and re-read the spells a thousand times, trying to figure out what to do. Finally, an answer came to her. Not the answer, not exactly, but part of it.  
She quickly wrapped her heavy wool wrap around her body, muffling it from the cold, then left her house, running down the path to Lord Elliot's for the second time that day.  
The sorceress barged in without asking - another throwback to rank she no longer had - and quickly tracked down Elliot himself.  
"Eve? What is it?" He asked, rather nervously, stunned by the look in her eyes.   
"I need your help...with a spell."  
"My help?" Elliot said, then smiled. "Eve, I haven't any magic to speak of." He demurred.   
"That's not entirely true...you have natural empathy, much like myself." She said, knowing the words as true as she spoke them. "It might be more, it might not. But...you're the only person that can help me with this."  
"I don't think I can..."  
"It's about Simeon." She said. Eve would say no more, so not to get the man's hopes up. She had not intended to even say that, but...  
"Simeon?" His eyes lit up with a fire she had never seen there before. "Whatever it takes, I'll do it."  
"Good. Come with me."   
It was nearing midnight as the sorceress lead Elliot back to her house. "You're positive he died in bed?" She said.  
"Yes." Elliot said.  
She smiled sadly. "That's what I thought." She slipped off her shoes, tossed back the covers. "Well...come along then." She said, sitting in the bed, sliding over towards the wall, opening the book in her lap.  
"What?" Elliot said, looking at her, a blank look in his eyes.   
"Come along." She said, patting the bed next to her. "He died here...we have to do the spell here." Eve grinned. "Don't tell me you've never shared a bed before."  
"Not...not with..."  
She did not have the time to go into all the not-withs he may have had. "Besides, we're both fully clothed. Come along, we haven't much time."  
Elliot went very pale and did as he was told. "I have no idea how to do a spell...I've never done one before." He said, his breathless voice   
"Your part is simple." She said. "You just have to reach out to him...to call him...to feel for him, that you want him back here with you, to bring him back."  
Eve closed her eyes and found the white place inside her where the sorcery came from, the blank space inside of her. She opened herself to Simeon, opened her soul to his, and reached, calling, pulling, begging.  
She could feel the presence of Elliot beside her, also calling, opened up with friendship, with love...she could feel when he reached the breaking point and fainted, his part done...only moments before she did the same thing. Had she been successful? Was she still alive? Perhaps she would never know...was she even still alive? Was her last conscious thought before she reached the breaking point and fainted too, her head landing not on the pillow as would have been expected, but rather on a bared muscular shoulder.  
Simeon...back from a death he was never meant to die, grinned. He put one arm around Elliot and one around Eve, bringing both of them into his embrace. Simeon felt his new heart beat in time with the two who were responsible for his having it, felt his breaths begin to come in time with theirs. He had no idea what would happen to the three of them next...life was unpredictable, but then that was the beauty of being alive, wasn't it?   
  
By:  
~Elske~  
30 September, 2001  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
